People do good because they are
human,
not because they are religious!

Do not give God any credit for the good they do, they did it!

What difficulties do you experience when engaging in
defending secular humanism? In the light of your studies, what strategies can
you adopt to overcome them?

Problem: The problem with challenging people is that it can lead to an argument.

Solution: We dig our heels in when we think our position is wrong or at fault.
We don't want to acknowledge that it is wrong or may be wrong for we think our
personal standing will be damaged if we give in. We think if we concede we paint
ourselves as having harmed the truth and therefore people. We end up no longer
defending our position, what we stand for, but our personal integrity. We don't
want the others to think we are fools.

The answer is to help people see that they are not their ideas. If they were the
ideas would be in their heads all the time. And ideas change but you are no less
or more of a person. There is no necessary connection between a person and the
ideas they have.

Show yourself as an example of a person who changed their mind and did not lose
face or look like a fool.

Saying things like, "I can't understand how you could believe something so
ridiculous" is attacking the personal integrity of the other person. It is using
the belief to attack the person.

Say instead something like, "I have some problems with the idea of God (or
whatever). Maybe you could help me. If suffering is the experience of
meaningless existence then does it prove by experience that there is no God?"

Help the person realise that they are confusing, "I want God," with, "I want
love and happiness." The two are not the same. When you marry, you marry your
wife not the happiness you think she will bring. You could try, "The Bible
commands us to long for God. Do you think such longing is good? Is it right to
do that to a person as we have enough in life to long for?"

Another thought that helps is to concentrate mostly on why people are not
Secular Humanists. Work that out and plan your approach accordingly. Ask why do
people fail to make the principle that people matter more than religious rules
and Gods their core principle?

Always affirm the personal worth of the other person and never devalue it. Try
to show that atheism and humanism are attractive. Better to do that than to
worry too much about showing them to be correct. Tell the other person you
understand how they feel about the issue and that you would like to think about
it with them a different way.

Problem: Defending and explaining humanism is difficult. I live in a society
that follows Catholicism as a political and Irish cultural badge with little
concern for religion, faith, logic or scripture. I feel that being an apologist
for humanism can lead to me being seen as strange.

Having being raised in a Roman Catholic background, the Catholicism I was taught
was about magical salvation through rites and ceremonies and it glorified
superstition and Roman Catholic culture.
Cultural Catholicism intends to want people to affiliate with the Church but
with little concern for having faith and is centred on baptisms and marriage and
funerals understood as mere rites with a social purpose. Their scripture says
such religion has “a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do
with such people”.
Cultural Catholics use the religion so that they can label themselves and others
Catholic as opposed to Protestants and so on. There is often a disdain for
Christian believers among cultural Catholics. Cultural Catholics tend to regard
sincere believing Catholics and Born-Again Christians as suffering from a
religious mania. Even offering to pray with somebody will meet some resistance
and one would get a sarcastic look. In Ireland, the mantra of cultural
Catholicism is the strange and paradoxical, “Once Catholic, Always Catholic.” It
is hard for them to think that Christians are called to follow Christ not
religion and that Christianity is a relationship.

Folk Catholicism tends to be very unreasonable and its followers would ignore
and resent even papal attempts to raise it up to a better and more dignified
level. I have experienced people when asked if they read the Bible who reply,
“That’s old hat. I prefer to read Our Lady’s messages that she is giving in
Medjugorje” or “I would rather have the information I get through angel card
readings”.

I was a Folk Catholic. Instead of faith in God, I had faith in myself that I
could manipulate and control God through using certain prayers and praying to
saints and using holy things such as holy water. It is quite common for popular
Catholicism to be riddled with superstition. Now is not the time to comment on
genuine Catholic doctrine which differs from that of folk Catholicism.
Solution: Answers can drive people away from humanism, I have to avoid giving
suggestions to people. Questions are better than answers. I frame open
questions wherein people can share detailed information. This nudges people to
think for themselves and maybe find the answer without feeling threatened. It is
honouring others’ own power to reason and to let the desire for knowledge
develop. Ultimately you never ever give anybody an answer but help them to find
it themselves. Thinking you can give somebody an answer instead of them making
the answer their own is domineering.

Cultural Catholics when asked why they think Catholicism and Irish Culture go
together reply, “That’s just the way things are!” I can’t get confrontational or
impatient with such a reply. I’m confident that they will feel silly saying it.

I then ask, “How important is religious truth and finding it?” This is better
than lecturing them that things being just the way they are does not make them
right or that it’s a pathetic reason to be involved with a religion.

Problem: I fear that during religious discussions people will say “I have a
right to my opinion”. I perceive that as a stubborn discussion stopper.

Solution: I have successfully forestalled it by using an anecdote that gently
helps people see its about stopping further discussion and that saying, “I will
think about that” is far better. If that fails I can ask, “I feel that view is
important to you. Why is that?” The anecdote can remind them how dangerous it
can be if people claim that their views are sacred and so nobody should
encourage/invite them to rethink them.

To develop my own confidence and to avoid the risk of being made to feel guilty
about being a challenge to their view, it helps if I remind myself that I cannot
ever engage with others without challenging some view they have. It is not
mocking or disrespecting it but trying to help the person rethink it so that
they might correct it. It is respecting them above their opinion.

The final step is helping them realise that if you are entitled to your opinion,
the opinion must be based on evidence, open to revision, open to changing your
mind should evidence come up that refutes the opinion. Calling something your
opinion is to say it is debatable.

It makes me sure that I have, wittingly or unwittingly, made them aware of a
weakness in their position. They seem to have been influenced by the modern
view “All religions are equally true and it doesn’t matter what religion you
belong to”. Though it pretends to oppose religious truth-claims it is actually a
religious truth-claim itself. It is also giving special treatment to religion.
If it were not it would simply say. “Whether harmful or not, it does not matter
what religion you have if any.” I fear knowing the prevalence of the attitude.
Opinions and beliefs are truth-claims.

I have tried to apply commonsense to certain issues and "I have a right to my
opinion" was the response I got. It usually is intended to stop the
conversation. Some people have responded that way when I simply asked them a
question in relation to faith. It showed that they were starting to rethink some
of their religious positions. That is why I had to be silenced. They act as if
they use opinions and beliefs to make themselves feel good in some way. They do
not want to hear that their opinions and beliefs are not actually about them but
should be open-minded attempts to find the truth. It is good to remind them that
a opinion by definition is asking for a challenge early on.

Rapport is matching your feelings and behaviour to others so that they feel they
are with an understanding person genuinely interested in them. Finding common
ground with lukewarm Catholics is hard. I struggle to remember that humanism is
an encounter with reality rather than just a set of beliefs so its wrong to
think I can argue somebody into humanism. My role is to be the sign of what is
beautiful in human nature and inspire people through that.

Rapport is absolutely necessary in order to make humanism look attractive to
those who you are in communication with.

It is important to be careful that if a person suffers some sadness that you
don’t try to create rapport by telling some story about how you went through
something similar. That is really dismissing what they have said. It is better
to ask questions that are not invasive which are worded to help them maybe think
things through clearer and give them the chance of finding some hope.

An atheist can find common ground with the Christian with the following
suggestions,

"Do you want to tell me how you know that?"

"I used to believe (or want to believe) something along that line. Why do you
believe that?"

"That makes sense to me. Let us see if it takes everything into account."